Intel Says Nehalem Is Its Greenest Processor

Intel recently stated that its upcoming Nehalem processor would be the greenest chip the company made to date. According to the chipmaker, the CPU set for launch in November incorporates revolutionary technology and systems built into its platform. Gordon Moore, co-founder of the company, called the 45-nm transistors Intel's greatest advancement ever.

In order to be able to build transistors on such a small scale, the high-k metal gate technology in the systems uses Hafnium. According to the company, both the energy efficiency and the speed of the product have been greatly improved through the use of this technology. Intel architect Ronak Singhal said that the company is making “performance and power and now highly connected,” reports vnunet.

“I don’t know how many hours we’ve spent arguing about power over features. If a feature added performance but used more power; it’s been a very different mindset for Nehalem,” he said. Besides the better gates, the new Nehalem platform will also feature an embedded controller meant to dynamically manage power on the processor and on the whole platform as well, called by the giant chipmaker Uncore.

The controller includes a number of processors equal to that of an old 486 processor. It uses monitors placed on the chip and the platform to be able to keep the power requirements at a minimum all the time. It can also concentrate the processing on the smallest possible number of cores.

The company says that the new approach is based on customers’ requirements. According to Singhal, 42 percent of data center managers were expecting to run out of available power by 2010 and were also spending around 50 cents on cooling and power for each dollar that was spent on hardware.

“Energy efficiency is a requirement to get a foot in the door,” said Steve Gunther, another Intel architect. “If it’s not energy efficient then a company or government won’t buy the system at all,” he added.